Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 7:56 PM, David Hamuel wrote:
> Yitzhak,
>
> The new version: 'Really?  I didn't know that :^) '.
>
>> just what you said was ambiguous.
>
> OK. Psalms 72:20 & 1 Samuel 6:10 — The same exact word, different  meaning.

How about, "Except for the dagesh, the words are spelled exactly the same way,
but the dagesh denotes the difference between the two meanings."  
Linguistically
speaking, they are really different words.  This to compare with homonyms 
which
are pronounced the same but have different meanings, or homographs that are
spelled the same but may be pronounced differently and have different 
meanings,
or with a single word that simply has multiple meanings (such as
Hebrew byt, kly,
etc), here we really have two different words, and the gemination (the
dagesh) is
all the difference.  Loosely speaking, it might be called the same
word, but it is
important not to let such loose speaking blur the difference between the two.

Some more examples:
)ana  'where?' Deut 1:28
)anna 'please' 2 Kings 20:3

(arumim 'crafty men' Job 5:12
(arummim 'naked men' Gen 2:25

(not a perfect minimal pair:)
)arukka 'long' 2 Sam 3:1
)aruxa 'health' Jer 30:17

And then Is 28:16 is a most interesting example.

David, what are your thoughts on licvo vs. licbo?

Yitzhak Sapir